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originally sponsored by Nevada Democrat Richard Bryan to within three
votes of passage in the Senate. Had he succeeded, the nation could have
saved five times as much oil as was reputed to be awaiting extraction
from Alaska, environmentalists said—and at what price? Viewed then, as
now, the bill would have been a landmark in the effort to reduce both
carbon-dioxide emissions and America’s dependence on foreign oil.
Gorton conceded that environmentally he was “a marvelous paradox.”
But “my positions are overwhelmingly consistent... .I am frustrated by
groups that demand 100 percent toeing the line.”^22
onMA23, 1991, y Judge Dwyer ordered a virtual halt to timber sales and
logging in 17 national forests stretching from the Olympic Peninsula to
Northern California. Dwyer agreed with the Sierra Club and Audubon
Society that the U.S. Forest Service and Fish & Wildlife had engaged in “a
remarkable series of violations” of environmental laws. To push ahead
with the sales “would risk pushing the species beyond a threshold from
which it could not recover.” Dwyer ordered the Forest Service to prepare a
plan that would comply with the National Forest Management Act of
1974, which mandated the preservation of “viable populations” of wild-
life. The law was the law, Dwyer said, and painful as it might be to those
caught in the crossfire the reality was that “the timber industry no longer
drives the Pacific Northwest’s economy. Job losses in the wood-products
industry will continue regardless of whether the northern spotted owl is
protected. The argument that the mightiest economy on Earth cannot af-
ford to preserve old-growth forests for a short time while it reaches an
overdue decision on how to manage them, is not convincing today.”^23
“Judge Dwyer’s opinion is a perfect example of anti-human decision
making,” Gorton seethed on the floor of the Senate. The ruling was radi-
cal and irresponsible, he said. Mourning the recent suicide of a despon-
dent logger, Gorton said judges and other high-level officials “must con-
front the fact that their decisions breed despair and pain.. .” Dwyer’s
analysis of the timber industry was flat wrong, Gorton continued. “The
Pacific Northwest is not running out of timber and massive layoffs are
not inevitable. Timber shortages and massive job losses are the inevitable
result of decisions by federal judges and the Fish & Wildlife Service.”^24
Over the next 11 months the Fish & Wildlife Service and the Bureau of
Land Management—both Interior Department agencies—found them-
selves at loggerheads. The Forest Service’s revised plan to protect the owl
was rebuffed by Judge Dwyer. Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan, the God
Squad’s chairman, said the Fish & Wildlife owl recovery plan developed